Investigation of MAF for Finishing the Inner Wall of Super-Slim Cardiovascular Stents Tube

Abstract

The internal wall of cardiovascular stent tubing produced by a drawing process has defects such as pits and bumps, making the surface rough and unusable. In this research, the challenge of finishing the inner wall of a super-slim cardiovascular stent tube was solved by magnetic abrasive finishing. Firstly, a spherical CBN magnetic abrasive was prepared by a new method, plasma molten metal powders bonding with hard abrasives; then, a magnetic abrasive finishing device was developed to remove the defect layer from the inner wall of ultrafine long cardiovascular stent tubing; finally, response surface tests were performed and parameters were optimized. The results show that the prepared spherical CBN magnetic abrasive has a perfect spherical appearance; the sharp cutting edges cover the surface layer of the iron matrix; the developed magnetic abrasive finishing device for a ultrafine long cardiovascular stent tube meets the processing requirements; the process parameters are optimized by the established regression model; and the inner wall roughness (Ra) of the nickel–titanium alloy cardiovascular stents tube is reduced from 0.356 μm to 0.083 μm, with an error of 4.3% from the predicted value. Magnetic abrasive finishing effectively removed the inner wall defect layer and reduced the roughness, and this solution provides a reference for polishing the inner wall of ultrafine long tubes.